Legal News

By Joe Schneider – Dec 18, 2011 8:09 PM ET Facebook Inc., the world’s most used social-networking service, can be sued by people who claim showing advertisements that their friends apparently like violates a California law regarding commercial endorsements. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose rejected Facebook’s bid to dismiss the lawsuit on Dec. [...]

By David Glovin and Joshua Gallu – Dec 16, 2011 9:54 AM ET Richard Syron, the former chief executive officer of Freddie Mac, andDaniel Mudd, ex-CEO of Fannie Mae, were sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over disclosures they made about subprime loans. Complaints were filed against the two men today in Manhattan federal [...]

By Sophia Pearson – Dec 16, 2011 9:20 AM ET Whether two Penn State officials must go to trial in the university sex-abuse scandal may depend on precisely what they heard from Mike McQueary, the football coach who told a grand jury he saw a child being raped. “It’s going to come down to what exactly [...]

By Karen Gullo – Dec 16, 2011 12:00 AM ET Barry Bonds, Major League Baseball’s career home-run record holder convicted of obstructing a U.S. probe of steroid use in professional sports, faces sentencing by a judge who chose not to jail two athletes for similar offenses. U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco today [...]

By Tiffany Kary – Dec 16, 2011 12:00 AM ET Louis J. Freeh, the former FBI director who took on two of 2011’s biggest scandals last month, joins the ranks of former high-ranking government officials trying to sell reputations for integrity following careers fraught with controversy. Freeh, 61, signed court papers Nov. 22 to become [...]

By Steven Church – Dec 15, 2011 9:33 AM ET The fate of the biggest municipal bankruptcy in the U.S. may depend on how judges in Alabama define the word “bond.” Alabama’s Jefferson County is in court today defending its decision to file for bankruptcy. Creditors including Bank of New York Mellon Corp. (BK) and JPMorgan Chase & [...]

By Heather Smith – Dec 15, 2011 6:42 AM ET Former French President Jacques Chirac was found guilty by a French criminal court of misusing Paris city funds during his years as mayor. Chirac, 79, was found guilty of all three charges against him related to diverting city money to benefit his political party and reward [...]

By Erik Larson – Dec 15, 2011 6:37 AM ET London police arrested a 37-year-old woman today as part of their investigation of bribes being paid to officers to get scoops for News Corp. (NWSA)’s now-defunct News of the World tabloid. The unidentified woman was arrested at a home in Surrey, England, and taken to a [...]

By Edvard Pettersson – Dec 15, 2011 12:01 AM ET Michael Perry, the ex-IndyMac Bancorp Inc. (IDMCQ) chief executive officer, must face the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s claims that caused more than $600 million in losses on mortgage loans that couldn’t be sold. U.S. District Judge Otis Wright II in Los Angeles denied Perry’s request to [...]

By David McLaughlin – Dec 14, 2011 9:08 AM ET Bank of New York Mellon Corp., the world’s largest custody bank, asked a court to dismiss the New York attorney general’s lawsuit accusing it of defrauding clients in foreign-exchange transactions. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued BNY Mellon in October, saying it misled public and private pension [...]

By Michael Riley and John Walcott – Dec 14, 2011 8:47 AM ET Google Inc. (GOOG) and Intel Corp. (INTC) were logical targets for China-based hackers, given the solid-gold intellectual property data stored in their computers. An attack by cyber spies on iBahn, a provider of Internet services to hotels, takes some explaining. iBahn provides broadband [...]

By Jonathan Browning and Erik Larson – Dec 14, 2011 7:01 AM ET News Corp. (NWSA) Deputy Chief Operating Officer James Murdoch has an explanation for why he failed in 2008 to properly read an e-mail that then triggered a phone- hacking scandal: It was a Saturday. Murdoch said he didn’t read the full e-mail [...]

By Carter Dougherty and Dakin Campbell – Dec 14, 2011 12:00 AM ET Three former executives of Washington Mutual Inc. will together pay $400,000 out of pocket as part of a $64 million settlement with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. over the largest U.S. bank failure, according to a person briefed on the matter. The FDIC [...]

By Joel Rosenblatt – Dec 13, 2011 10:24 AM ET Novell Inc. (NOVL) began closing arguments today in its case claiming Microsoft Corp. unfairly used its monopoly on personal computer operating systems to suppress WordPerfect, a rival word-processing program. In defending the case in federal court in Salt Lake City, Microsoft called Chairman Bill Gates as a [...]

By Sophia Pearson and Ann Woolner – Dec 13, 2011 10:13 AM ET Jerry Sandusky, the former assistant football coach at Pennsylvania State University, waived a preliminary hearing in his child sex-abuse case, canceling scheduled testimony by some of his accusers. Magisterial Senior District Judge Robert Scott was to hold a hearing today in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, on [...]

By Tom Schoenberg and Sara Forden – Dec 13, 2011 12:04 AM ET AT&T Inc. (T) may have fended off failure temporarily for its proposed $39 billion purchase of T-Mobile USA Inc. after a federal judge agreed to put on hold a government challenge to the biggest merger announced this year. U.S. District Judge Ellen [...]

By Cullen Wheatley – Dec 13, 2011 12:00 AM ET White-collar criminal-defense attorneys may be more sought-after at U.S. law firms than at any other time in a decade because of stepped-up enforcement of a federal anti-bribery statute and the Dodd-Frank regulatory law. There is “greater demand for white-collar and enforcement partners than any time [...]

By Dawn McCarty and Joe Schneider – Dec 12, 2011 8:55 AM ET Lee Enterprises Inc., the owner of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and 47 other daily U.S. newspapers, filed for bankruptcy protection from creditors and plans to borrow as much as $40 million to continue operations. In Chapter 11 documents filed today in Wilmington, Delaware, Lee [...]

By Linda Sandler – Dec 12, 2011 7:24 AM ET Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., which has approval for a $65 billion bankruptcy liquidation plan, will ask a judge to let it use $1.3 billion of the estate’s money to increase its stake in Archstone, its biggest real estate asset, according to a person familiar with [...]

By Sophia Pearson – Dec 12, 2011 12:00 AM ET The evidence prosecutors have laid out against former Pennsylvania State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, who is charged with sexually abusing 10 boys, may make a plea bargain more probable than a trial, according to lawyers who have followed the case. The testimony of multiple [...]